


Song of Solomon 4:7

by dawnstruck



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Character Study, Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash, Self-Acceptance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-21
Updated: 2017-03-21
Packaged: 2018-10-08 15:45:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10390206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dawnstruck/pseuds/dawnstruck
Summary: Ronan Lynch does not believe in sins.He confesses anyway.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I don't think I've ever fallen so hard and so fast for the characters in a book series as I have for the ones in the Raven Cycle which meant I immediately knew that I would have to write about them. Still, I dragged out finishing reading the books becaue I did not want it to be over. Now I am through and this little thing spilled out of me as soon as I was done.
> 
> Timewise, it's set somewhere in The Dream Thieves, though I am deliberately being a bit vague since I wasn't too sure about the exact chronological order of some things, but primarily this is a character study anyway.

 

At St. Agnes, Sunday morning mass was typically held by Pastor Denver who was as much a staple of Aglionby as the ravens, the big cars, and the boys with more money than wits were.

Ronan who went to church primarily for the family he once had and the family he still had left, had always liked Pastor Denver. He would still go to mass, even if he didn't like him, but he wouldn't do it quite this easily. This religiously.

Pastor Denver was ancient, from Ronan's own teenaged-yet-old-beyond-his-years perspective. He was sturdy for someone closing in on seventy, not quite stooped with age, and his face was more weathered by the sun than wizened by the passage of time.

Some days, the only real proof of how long he had been around was his snow white hair and the liver spots marking his hands, but his liberal smile and the twinkle in his eyes more than made up for that.

Ronan never quite knew what he else liked about going to church, except for that it had long been a habit and, even for him, those were hard to break. Especially since they connected him to his father in ways that had little to do with blood or real magic.

He didn't quite like kneeling on the pews. Didn't quite like praying and hoping that someone not-Cabeswater was actually listening. He didn't quite like staring at smooth-yet-cracked-in-some-places wooden Jesus on the cross behind the altar that had been a generous gift from an alumni and that was supposedly 300 years old. He didn't quite like going to confession.

But he liked Pastor Denver. So he went to confession anyway.

He wouldn't have, under most circumstances, as Ronan did not truly believe in sins.

He used the word 'fuck' like others said 'please' or 'thanks', just more viciously and with more versatile applications. He punched people he hated and sometimes he punched people he maybe-still-kind-of-loved. He spent entirely too much time looking at another boy and even more time just thinking about him.

In the recesses of his mind, a voice that sounded too reasonable to not have been inspired by Gansey told him that he was just using this as a substitute instead of actually getting a proper therapist. That even someone like Ronan Lynch occasionally needed someone who listened to him without bias.

Pastor Denver, surprisingly, was someone like that.

For all intents and purposes, he shouldn't have been.

He was from somewhere in Virginia, another town much like Henrietta, maybe even a little more backwater. Not an Aglionby boy himself, but still from a well-to-do family. Upstandingly pious and simply born and raised in a different time.

Boys who came to him after service or throughout the week spoke of weed and other vices. They confessed frustration with their studies, anger at their parents. They were told to speak three Ave Marias, they did, they felt absolved.

Ronan, who did not believe in sins, did not believe in absolution either.

"What brings you here, my child?" Pastor Denver asks kindly when Ronan pulls the rickety door of the confessional shut behind himself and sinks down on the worn velvet of the bench.  
Pastor Denver does not have to glance through the grid separating the two stalls to know who he is talking to. He'll recognize Ronan's voice, of course, but he also recognizes Ronan's gait, Ronan's attitude.

Ronan never says, Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned, as sins are void and meaningless, a human invention where he believed in animal law.

"He had a fight with Blue and they broke up. I think. They didn't really say anything."

No introduction, no pleasantries. Pastor Denver does not need them.

"Did that make you feel relief?" he asks.

Numbly, Ronan shakes his head, his near-naked scalp dragging against the wooden wall behind him. Pastor Denver can't see that, though, so Ronan says, "I wasn't relieved. I was..." He ponders on the word, finds no better one. "Sad."

"Why sad?"  
"Because," he says slowly, "I thought they would be good. For each other. Blue would be good for him."

"Do you think he needs someone good?"  
"He needs someone who loves him."

"And did she?"

"I thought so," Ronan purses his lips. If he really thinks about it, it's stupid. Blue is sixteen and scruffy and hungry for something more than another Henrietta kid also hungry for something more. They are too alike in that regard. Too starved for change.

Ronan balls his hands to fists and unclenches them. He has too much change in his bones.

"Maybe she did," he continues, "Maybe she could have, eventually. But now that's done."

He had seen the look in Blue's eyes when she looked at who was now her ex though he had never really been her boyfriend to begin with wasn't the look of teenage girl who felt she had been wronged, though Ronan had to admit that he didn't know much about teenage girls. Blue had been sad and scared and worried and angry and proud and selfless in her selfishness, and _that_ Ronan did know a lot about.

“And he?” Pastor Denver asks. He never says the name, though Ronan thinks that might be because he himself had never explicitly mentioned it. Maybe Pastor Denver thinks he has been talking about Gansey all this time, or about some other boy. Or maybe Ronan is really that obvious. That is his greatest fear, next to night terrors and memories of finding his father's body or thinking of wasps in Gansey's mouth, his lungs, his heart.

“He what?” he asks.

“Did he love her?”

Ronan thinks about his own wording for a long moment, even though he has known the answer for a long while.

“I think he is so starved for love that he would accept it from anyone at all,” he tries finally. Maybe this is why he never needed to say the name here; it obviously wasn't about Gansey. “I think he doesn't quite know the difference and so he would hold on to cheap facsimiles.”

It had taken months and a deaf ear to finally get him out of that trailer park and, on some days, he still seemed like he'd rather go back that acknowledge that his own parents did not love him in a way that deserved to be call love.

“And you?” Pastor Denver asks and Ronan sucks in a breath. They'd never spoken about that either. It had hung there, like cobwebs surreptitiously spun in the dark and when you took a step to far you got a mouthful of it and couldn't help but feel betrayed even though it was you who had decided to not simply turn on the lights.

“Doesn't matter,” he says, drawing a veil of carelessness over his voice, “This is not about me.”

He likes to pretend, sometimes, that he is not here for himself. Not for his supposed sins, certainly, but also not for his souls. Just a favor for a friend who does not know about it.

This is not about how Kavinsky calls him faggot and makes suggestive gestures at him. Not about how Adam and Gansey and even fucking Noah make cow eyes at Blue like breasts were a new invention. It's not about Ronan deciding against sleep and nightmares and lying awake in the dark instead, turning the word 'gay' over and over in his mind.  
Maybe that's it, though. Maybe he is actually sleeping when he thinks about it, maybe him poking at it and touching it with curious hands had made it become real. Maybe it never was a part of him, but he made it one, because it was a strange dream thing and he had brought it into his world.

Maybe it could be unmade.

“Ronan,” Pastor Denver says and it's rare that he addresses him directly because this is still happening under the guise of faux anonymity.. Automatically, Ronan sits up a little straighter. He does not do that for just any authority figure, but clergymen are to be respected, for the most part.

“Ronan,” the old man repeats and he has leaned forward a little. The tip of his hooked nose is barely visible behind the grid. “You are very mature, for your age.”

It's rare that someone would say that about Ronan. Most people think him a prissy brat, an adolescent caught in his rebellious phase who needed someone to shake him and set him on a straight path again.

Hah, Ronan thinks pathetically. Straight.

Pastor Denver knows a little about Ronan, of course. He knows of his murdered father and his comatose mother and his overbearing older brother. The Lynch family name in general is well known, though people know little about the individuals.

So maybe Pastor Denver inferred that Ronan was mature by the way he had not shed a single tear at his father's open grave, had instead held his little brother's hand because their mother was already absent even then. Maybe he could tell from the blue shadows underneath Ronan's eyes and the way his jaw was almost continuously gritted in a manner that was not at all recommended by leading dentists. Maybe he had heard enough confessions in his life to be able to suss people out, just like that.

“But you are also still very young,” Pastor Denver continuous and that, at least, is familiar territory. Unlike Declan, however, he manages to say it without condescension.

“So?” Ronan demands anyway, his shoulders hunching up in a reaction he tells himself is more aggressive than defensive.

“It's alright for you to feel like you don't quite fit,” Pastor Denver says in his broad Virginian accent. When he preaches, his Latin has the same accent and Ronan has always liked something about that, too, that it was not really a dead language, but that it still developed and adapted. “It's alright if there are parts of you that you don't yet understand.”

He means the unspoken gay thing and the not-all-done-with-puberty thing. The you-experienced-terrible-tragedy-at-a-very-crucial-stage-in-your-life thing is in there, too, probably, but Ronan kind of wants to laugh. The pastor, for all his belief in higher powers, knows not a thing about dreams or ley lines or immortal kings.

But he does know how Ronan's voice goes a little tender, a little reverent when he speaks of the boy with the name-that-is-not-named, and maybe that is enough.

“What should I do?” Ronan asks, even though he never asks anyone for advice ever.

“Go,” Pastor Denver says heartily, “Live a little, enjoy the day. You never know how many there are left.”

“Carpe diem?” Ronan says wryly, “Really?”

“YOLO, as the the youngins say,” Pastor Denver replies, flippant.  
“Oh God,” Ronan snorts, his abs contracting with what wants to be full-bellied laughter, and he doesn't even care that he took the Lord's name in vain while in church because the priest honestly just said YOLO and that is probably just as bad.

Pastor Denver has no idea that death features a little more prominently in the lives of Ronan and his friends, but maybe his words have some wisdom to them anyway.

“Run along now,” the old man tells him, “From what I could smell over the incense there were at least two of your peers who need to repent for the use of certain borderline illegal substances.”

Ronan grins, already getting up from his seat, when he remembers something.

“Should I pray?” he asks, fingertips on the brazen door handle.

“No,” the pastor says, “There are no sins to absolve. Go buy yourself some ice cream and enjoy the sunshine.”

So Ronan goes, saunters down along the side of the pews where the boys who sing in the choir are almost done with re-arranging the Bibles. He's got his hands jammed into the pockets of his slacks, though it does not quite have the same effect as it would with his ripped jeans, and when he gets to the heavy oaken doors he shoves one open with his left shoulder.

Light greets him, almost blinding after the comforting darkness of the confessional, and he has to blink and wait for his eyes to adjust.

When he does, his very own messiah is awaiting him.

Sitting on the small set of stairs that leads up to the chapel, Adam Parrish has his elbows braced against his knees and it watching the sporadic Sunday morning traffic. When he hears the hinges of the door, he glances back and up at Ronan.

“Took a while,” he says, as though he had been waiting here since mass was over. Since before that, even.

“Got a lot of sins to get of my chest,” Ronan says, even though he does not believe in sins.

Adam looks at him like he might know that, but he just stands up, unnecessarily brushes the dust off his pants and asks , “Man upstairs been listening?”

“Nah,” Ronan tilts his head back, so far that the tendons in his neck are straining. He squints up at the violent blue of the sky. “He doesn't bother with the small fish.”

“Ronan Lynch, a small fish,” Adam echoes in disbelief, but then he jostles Ronan with his shoulder, “I would've thought you were a shark, with that smile and that blood thirst of yours.”

Ronan bares his teeth and jostles him right back, nearly hip-checks him right off the stairs and into the downtrodden grass. But a not-that-little part of him is pleased, pleased because apparently Adam sometimes thought about the way he smiled and, last year in Biology, the two of them had held a presentation about apex predators (upon Ronan's insistence), and Adam had gotten them an A by explaining how sharks were terribly misunderstood creatures who really did not kill all that many people.

Humans, they both knew, were the most fearsome animals of all.

“Wanna get some ice cream?” Ronan asks, non-sequitur.

“It's not that hot,” Adam says, as though no one had ever had ice cream outside of summer.

“C'mon,” Ronan says, “My treat.”

Wrong thing to say, of course.

“Ronan,” Adam starts, his chest puffing up.

“Hey,” Ronan says, poking him in the sternum. Adam's breath rushes out in a sudden gush.

“There's that hot air we need to justify getting ice cream,” Ronan teases, “You did your share, I'll do mine.”

He winks at him, quite cheekily, to defuse the bomb or take the wind out of Adam's desperately self-sufficient sails, he's not quite sure, and Adam-

Adam stills and glances away with lowered lashes.

“Alright,” he says, a little too softly to not make the moment feel somewhat meaningful, “Let's go.”

Together, they cross the parking lot, over to Ronan's gleaning BMW, and Ronan gets behind the wheel and Adam gets on the passenger seat. It's rare, these days, for them to be alone together, and that in itself makes it feel tantalizing. As though they were actually going on a date, instead of Ronan just playing make-belief.

That's fine, though. Ronan has always been a dreamer.

And, he reminds himself, as he revs the engine but does not turn up his thudding music, his dreams have a habit of becoming reality anyway.

 

* * *

 **Song of Solomon 4:7** _You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you._

 

* * *

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos for dope Pastor Denver whose character description was the thing I started out with!


End file.
